shadowed ruin!
Wade is as deep as the canon there. Sometimes when he's thoughtful he
gives me a creepy feeling. At others, when he comes out with one of his
easy, cool assurances that we are all right--that we will get each
other--why, then something grim takes possession of me. I believe him,
I'm happy, but there crosses my mind a fleeting realization--not of what
our friend is now, but what he has been. And it disturbs me, chills me.
I don't understand it. For, Collie, though I understand your feeling of
what he is, I don't understand mine. You see, I'm a man. I've been a
cowboy for ten years and more. I've seen some hard experiences and
worked with a good many rough boys and men. Cowboys, Indians, Mexicans,
miners, prospectors, ranchers, hunters--some of whom were bad medicine.
So I've come to see men as you couldn't see them. And Bent Wade has been
everything a man could be. He seems all men in one. And despite all his
kindness and goodness and hopefulness, there is the sense I have of
something deadly and terrible and inevitable in him.

"It makes my heart almost stop beating to know I have this man on my
side. Because I sense in him the man element, the physical--oh, I can't
put it in words, but I mean something great in him that can't be beaten.
What he says _must_ come true!... And so I've already begun to dream and
to think of you as my wife. If you ever are--no! _when_ you are, then I
will owe it to Bent Wade. No man ever owed another for so precious a
gift. But, Collie, I can't help a little vague dread--of what, I don't
know, unless it's a sense of the possibilities of Hell--Bent Wade....
Dearest, I don't want to worry you or frighten you, and I can't follow
out my own gloomy fancies. Don't you mind too much what I think. Only
you must realize that Wade is the greatest factor in our hopes of the
future. My faith in him is so unshakable that it's foolish. Next to you
I love him best. He seems even dearer to me than my own people. He has
made me look at life differently. Likewise he has inspired you. But you,
dearest Columbine, are only a sensitive, delicate girl, a frail and
tender thing like the columbine flowers of the hills. And for your own
sake you must not be blind to what Wade is capable of. If you keep on
loving him and idealizing him, blind to what has made him great, that
is, blind to the tragic side of him, then if he did something terrible
here for you and for me the shock would be bad for you. Lor